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Meat Substitutes Are Healthier Than Meat

Steaks, schnitzel, sausages, and cold cuts are also available vegan or vegetarian. Meat substitutes are booming and are also attracting more and more attention in conventional supermarkets. Because more and more people want to eat meatlessly. However, it is often said that meat substitutes are not healthy. We look at the relevant arguments and show: Meat substitutes are more nutritious than meat – but it depends on which meat substitute you choose!

Meat substitute – vegan or vegetarian

Meat substitutes are products that imitate typical meat or sausage products but are meat-free. Be it meatballs, bratwurst, chicken nuggets, mortadella, or lyoner – the meat-free version is all made from plants, usually soy or wheat gluten. Often, however, they also contain egg products or dairy products.

The meat substitute is not always vegan and as a consumer, you have to look closely at the packaging to find out the quality of the product. In May 2016, Ökotest examined various meat substitute products, which led to the headline “Ökotest warns of meat substitute products” making the rounds.

However, the test verdict is more than questionable, as we explain below:

Unobtrusive labeling for meat substitutes

The first thing the test team had to complain about was that the labeling of the meat substitute products was too inconspicuous. Of course, the concern was not that a vegan might accidentally snag a meat substitute with powdered milk or egg white, but that something that wasn’t meat might end up on a meat-eater’s plate.

The word “vegetarian”, “vegan” or “veggie” can hardly be found on the packaging since in the cases complained about it was printed a little smaller than the description “cold meat” or “burger”.

Fat in meat substitutes

Then they discovered fat and salt in the meat substitute, too much of both, as the testers found. However, what “too much” means remains relative. Because it goes on to say: That meat substitutes are often lower in fat, but sometimes also similar in fat to meat products.

Why it was assumed that meat substitutes not only have to be meat-free but also have to be lower in fat than meat will remain a mystery. Because meat substitutes do not weight loss pills, but everyday foods that also contain fat – and fat is a normal nutrient that is not a problem in the right quality. As a consumer, it simply means: reading the label, assessing the quality of the fat, and then making a purchase decision or putting the product back.

Salt and seasoning in meat substitutes

In some products, more than 2 g of salt per 100 g was found and the meat substitutes were devalued as a result. If you look around in the real sausage department, the children’s sausage, which should actually be particularly mild, already contains said 2 g of salt per 100 g. Ham provides between 5 and 6 g salt, salami 5 g, turkey breast 3 g, and meat sausage 2.5 g salt. Most cheeses also contain far more salt than 2g per 100g. Sausage and cheese can therefore safely contain an enormous amount of salt, but meat substitutes are devalued because of the small amounts of salt.

Next, the spices contained in the meat substitute were criticized. Yeast extract containing glutamate is present – ​​and glutamate is known to cause headaches. Compared to pure monosodium glutamate, however, yeast extract can still be rated as harmless – as glutamate-sensitive people will confirm.

Incidentally, the “real” sausage often contains pure glutamate and not just yeast extract. In addition – using the example of a meat sausage – this combination of spices can be included:

iodized nitrite curing salt (iodized salt, preservative: sodium nitrite), dextrose, glucose syrup, spices, spice extracts, yeast extract, yeast, and bouillon concentrate.
Then just a little yeast extract.

Petroleum hydrocarbons in meat substitute packaging

According to Ökotest, mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOSH) are contained in some packaging of meat substitute products, which also led to the devaluation of the meat substitute, because it cannot be ruled out that the MOSH are transferred to the food and that they have led to organ damage in animal experiments.

However, the MOSH problem does not only affect vegan or vegetarian meat substitutes – as one might think based on this test result. In the summer of 2016, Okotest examined “normal” grilled sausages and also discovered MOSH there.

By no means only sausages – whether vegetarian or not – are affected, but also all other packaged food – whether it’s cheese, rice, oatmeal, or muesli. It is therefore a well-known packaging problem which, moreover, has already been remedied by many manufacturers.

Rainforest clearing for meat substitutes?

If meat substitute products also contained soy that came from rainforest areas, the product in question also received a bad mark from Ökotest, because then – according to the testers – you could eat meat straight away.

This logic is incomprehensible because everyone should know today that it is in particular factory farming that causes new rainforests to be cleared again and again. Finally, the soybeans from South America are an important part of EU concentrate feed – and knowing that 1kg of meat requires feeding 20 times more soy (10kg) than is needed to produce 1kg of tofu, it is worth it to switch to meat substitutes even if the soy used came from rainforest areas.

However, most meat substitute manufacturers source their soybeans from EU countries, making the discussion unnecessary anyway.

Traces of GM soy in meat substitutes

Traces of GM soy were found in some vegan finished products. How does such contamination with GM soy come about? And how can this happen when the tofu manufacturer makes every effort to only be able to process non-GM soy?

Unfortunately, so much GM soy is cultivated today (for cattle feed and thus for the production of meat and eggs, not as a meat substitute) that farmers who grow non-GM soy can no longer guarantee that they are free of GM crops. Even if one succeeds in protecting one’s own fields from contamination from GM soy fields, it is possible that the carefully cultivated non-GM soy is contaminated with traces (!) of GM soy during transport or in warehouses.

In view of this situation, it is extremely paradoxical to blame those who try to use non-GM soy when their products contain traces of GM soy in the per thousand range. On the contrary! These companies deserve great praise for still being able to keep their products more than 99 percent GMO-free, despite the omnipresence of GM soy.

Meat, sausage, egg, and dairy product eaters who buy conventional cheap products are not only responsible for the fact that meat substitutes contain traces of GM soy, but also indirectly consume a multiple of GM soy with every piece of meat and with every egg.

Additives in meat substitutes

Additives are also criticized in the meat substitute products: if you look at the list, most of them are completely harmless, if not extremely healthy, e.g. B. Anthocyanins and carotenes as colorings for vegan sausages, magnesium chloride as a coagulant for tofu as well as pectin and locust bean gum as thickeners so that the replacement sausage can be sliced.

Here we have selected the list of ingredients of a real meat product (a Vienna sausage) for comparison:

Beef, pork, bacon, nitrite curing salt (table salt, preservative E250), sugars, spices, di- and triphosphate E450, E451, E575, ascorbic acid E300, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids E471, sodium ascorbate E301, flavor enhancer E 621, flavoring, natural casing ( is also consumed), smoke.
In any case, the nitrite in the curing salt and the glutamate (E 621) are harmful to health. Which spices, which aroma, and which “sugars” are contained are left to the imagination of the consumer. It is also interesting that there seem to be people who enjoy eating an intestine.

Meat substitutes are healthier than sausage and meat products

In view of the above facts, why Ökotest believed it had to warn against meat substitutes is incomprehensible. The Albert Schweitzer Foundation probably had a similar experience, which commissioned a study whose results were published in January 2017. This showed that meat substitutes such as veggie sausages and veggie steaks are healthier than meat.

According to this study, the vegetarian and vegan meat alternatives contained fewer unhealthy ingredients than comparable meat products and also had a more favorable nutrient composition.

While Okotest only checked 22 meat substitute products, the study by the Albert Schweitzer Foundation included 80 different meat alternatives and 27 products containing meat.

The fat and protein content, the amount of salt, and the additives contained were examined. In the vast majority of meat substitutes, the fat quality was better than in the meat products, and the vast majority of meat substitutes contained far fewer additives compared to the meat products. It was also interesting that the meat substitutes in all eleven product categories tested – whether schnitzel, steak, or salami – contained on average more protein than the meat products.

Vegan finished products – it’s the quality that counts!

But even when buying meat substitutes, it is important to read the list of ingredients! Because there are different qualities here too. In our article entitled Vegan convenience products in the supermarket: rarely good, we explain what you should look out for when buying vegan meat substitutes.

Because especially when you reach for the conventional meat substitute in the conventional supermarket, you have to reckon with the usual additives and the usual inferior quality.

Meat substitutes of organic quality from well-known brands from organic supermarkets, on the other hand, meet completely different criteria. In most cases, these products do not contain any harmful additives, are made from organically produced high-quality raw materials, and mostly consist of organic soybeans from EU cultivation.

And if it is pointed out again and again that these products also contain a lot of salt, then first of all you have to consider that it is NOT a nitrite curing salt and also not iodized table salt, but sea salt. Secondly, you look for products with less salt or you prepare the other meals that day (vegetables, salad, pasta, etc.) with less salt.

Jackfruit as a meat substitute

An interesting and natural meat substitute is the unripe jackfruit. When cooked, it has a consistency similar to poultry meat and, due to its neutral taste, can be heartily seasoned as the mood takes you. Unlike seitan, it is gluten-free, and unlike soy, jackfruit is definitely non-GMO.

If no meat, then no meat substitute?

It is often said: If you don’t like to eat meat, you should please stay away from meat substitutes. Those who reject meat should also not eat anything that looks like meat and tastes like meat but is not meat. The reason for this strange opinion is unknown to us.

From our point of view, it is about preventing unnecessary suffering and unnecessary environmental pollution wherever possible. Both take place in connection with meat production. Therefore, if it is possible to reduce suffering and environmental pollution with the help of healthy (!) meat substitutes because this makes it easier for many people to distance themselves from meat, why not?

It should also be taken into account that sausage does not march through the countryside on four legs, but first has to be made from meat and numerous spices, preservatives, aromas, curing salt, and many other additives in a very laborious process. Yes, hardly anyone eats meat raw and unseasoned.

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Written by Micah Stanley

Hi, I'm Micah. I am a creative Expert Freelance Dietitian Nutritionist with years of experience in counseling, recipe creation, nutrition, and content writing, product development.

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